


The Cat, The Witch, and The Summoning Circle

by Fangirlogan



Category: Original Work
Genre: Cats, Magic, Prompt Fic, Witchcraft, Witches, a little bit of violence but not graphic at all, for cat lovers and witchcraft lovers alike, it's super cute I promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-18 17:44:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17585405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fangirlogan/pseuds/Fangirlogan
Summary: Prompt: Cats make terrible familiars. Attracted by the heat released by magic, they frequently interrupt rituals by sitting in the summoning circles.A witch's cat is an adorable nuisance in her daily work. She gets involved with some demons... What could possibly go wrong? And what about the cat?





	The Cat, The Witch, and The Summoning Circle

**Author's Note:**

> A little bit of violence, nothing graphic and completely appropriate for all ages I think. If you're concerned, feel free to message me! I'm netflix-food-relax on tumblr :)
> 
> Also, this prompt is from a great writing discord server where we do monthly challenges, roleplay, writing workshops, resources, and more! Message me for a link if you're interested in joining!

 

“...veni ad me— damn it, Patches! Shoo! Get the hell off my circle!” The witch blew out her candles and snapped her fingers to turn on the overhead lights.

Patches, the cat in question, let out an innocent  _ mrow _ and rolled over in the middle of the table, chalk smearing on his black fur. The witch sighed and scratched his chest and head. She knew that summoning circles were like warm sunlight on a kitchen floor in the afternoon. But she also knew she wasn’t getting any work done.

“Patches,” she started, placing her hands in her robed lap and leaning down to look her cat in the eye. “I need to summon. I have clients. They pay me money. Money that buys you food and toys.” The witch directed a stern finger in the cat’s direction. “Get. Off. My. Circle.”

A lazy roll from the cat, stretching and soaking in the warm magic. The witch sighed and picked him up, moving him to her lap. “Am I warm enough for you, you dumb cat? Can you stay here?” Patches the cat snuggled into the soft fabric and seemed content to stay there. Hopefully long enough to summon one minor demon and have at least a conversation or maybe even make a deal.

The witch pushed a loose lock of hair back behind her ear and tried not to move too much, lest she disturb the sitting-still-for-now cat in her lap. She lit three of the many candles in front of her and snapped her fingers to turn the lights off again.

She moved the summoning book from the top of the stack of books to her right to the table in front of her and began reciting. She mostly knew the incantations by heart, as she had done them so many times, but it was nice to have a reference. Just in case. When needed, she added herbs to the cauldron to her left or lit more candles. She went through her ritual and tried not to disturb Patches as she reached across the table or when she had to grab a fallen leaf from the floor.

Finally, she had everything in her pre-ritual prepared and she checked her list of summons.  _ Ah, yes.  _ Aeshma. He had been stealing pets from locals for months now. Finally someone from the city council had knocked on her door, willing to pay her to solve this problem. Sure, he didn’t entirely know what she did. All he knew was that she solved mysterious problems and she did it quietly. And that was all he needed to know.

She dropped a lit match into a bowl of leaves and spoke her summoning lines. “Voco te, Aeshma. Veni ad me, Aeshma.” The sound of a spark and a small rumble heralded the arrival of this fiery creature. He sat on her table, his arms crossed and a glare ready for her.

“Who dares call me? You must have a death wish.” While his glower was impressive, the witch had no time for theatrics. She had a long day ahead of her, her list of names and problems and clients poking at the back of her mind.

“Hello, Aeshma. You can cool with the…” she waved a hand above her shoulder, referring to the flames licking the air around the demon. “...pyrotechnics. I’ve already got fireproof spells on everything so you’re just being a nuisance.”

The demon rolled his eyes but didn’t show any sign of cooling off anything. “Look,” the witch started, placing her hands flat on the table in front of her. “You don’t want to be here, I don’t want you to be here, so let’s just-- Patches!”

The cat had decided to leap off her lap and onto the stack of spellbooks next to her chair. At her startled yell, he had then jumped onto the table. The table where a fiery demon was currently burning a hellfire.

And then the heat lessened and the flames began to die down. “By Satan, what is this? Is that a cat?” The light of his ember skin moved as he twisted around to watch Patches. “I have cats.” He reached out to pet him.

The witch tensed, waiting for his fiery hands to light her poor cat on fire. “Wait—” she started, but Patches was already pressing his forehead into the demon’s hands.  _ I guess demons from hell are like warm sunlight on the kitchen floor, too. _

The demon was enraptured in the small creature, his annoyance at the summoning quickly disappearing. “My cats, of course, are not like this small thing. They are fierce creatures of fire and destruction. What is its name?”

The witch had definitely not been expecting the conversation to take this direction. She had been expecting curses and hellfire, but instead she answered, “Patches.”

The demon raised his head to look at her. “You named your cat…  _ Cats  _ are magnificent, strong creatures with rich histories and great honors bestowed upon them.” The witch nodded in agreement. She knew all about cats and their history. She had researched her familiars well, after all. “And you,” the demon continued, “you puny human, you decided to call it  _ Patches _ ?”

_ Well, when you say it like that. _

The witch raised her chin in indignation. “Patches is a perfect cat name. Look! Look at his fur, it’s splotchy and colored in little squares, you know, like  _ patches _ .”

Patches was now entirely in the demon’s lap, unaware of the dangers of fire but soaking in the warmth nonetheless. The demon moved a clawed hand to gently scratch his head. Patches was purring now.

Seeing her opportunity, the witch took advantage of the unusually calm situation. Normally her deals involved yelling and bargaining and arguing and cajoling. Maybe this time it would be easier. “Clearly he likes you,” she commented casually. “Do you see pets often?”

The demon nodded, still focused on her dumb cat. “Oh yes, humans have wonderful pets.”

“Do you ever, uh, visit? Stop by earth? Hang out with some animals?” the witch asked.

At that, the demon looked up, eyes narrowing. “Are you accusing me of stealing your people’s animals?” The flames had returned to his skin but thankfully hadn’t leap into the air yet. “I would never.”

The witch raised an eyebrow. “Gee, why don’t I believe you, demon?”

Aeshma lit up at that, fire rising up around him. (Patches was fine, unaffected by the dangers of fire.) “The bond between man and beast is a  _ beautiful  _ one,” the demon asserted. “And the fact that you would even accuse me of such a heinous act--”

The witch held her hands up in defense. “Okay, alright, got it. Not you. Any idea who it might be? As you said, I just want to help my people keep their animals safe. Bonds and all that.”

The demon paused in his petting. Patches, immediately missing her personal back scratcher, let out a  _ mrow _ and pawed at the demon’s leg. The demon smiled and resumed his petting. “Sure, I’ll tell you what I know.” The witch grabbed a blank sheet of paper and a pen from underneath her table, ready to write.

After she had written her list of potential suspects and the areas where pets might be in danger in the next few weeks, she was almost sad to see Aeshma leave. Patches was definitely upset as the demon moved the cat from his lap to the table. The witch, not wanting to send her dumb cat to hell with the demon, grabbed him and put him on the floor.

“Thank you for your help, Aeshma.”

“Of course, young witch. Thank you for letting me pet your cat.”

“Of course.” She offered him a half smile and doused the fire in her summoning bowl. With a  _ snap _ , Aeshma was whisked back to home to hell. The witch looked at her paper, notes scrawled in blue pen. Forget long day, it was going to be a long week.

\-----

The witch spent the next few days focused mainly on the city council’s case. Of course she got side tracked with contacting Mrs. Gartner’s recently deceased husband to ask  _ where the hell had he put the money. _ The witch did not know what money or what it was for or where it was from; it was her job to be a witch not to pry into the details of her suspiciously wealthy clients.

And then of course poor little Susie down the street had gotten a very bad whooping cough. And while the witch had better things to do, she couldn’t just let her suffer. She had baked some cookies with a little magic  _ kick  _ and delivered them to her mother. And she cast a healing spell in their driveway two nights ago, just for good measure.

So while the witch had definitely been interrogating some demons from Aeshma’s list, she had also gotten a little sidetracked. She had resolved that morning, sipping from tea and watering her plants and brewing her usual stock of potions, that she would focus on the city council’s animal thief today. She looked down at her list of eleven demons. Three names were crossed off, as they had already been summoned and absolved of guilt in one way or another.

She dropped some food in Patches’ bowl and tidied up a bit. Patches was currently fussing with her old robes, so covered in potion stains and spell damage she had sacrificed them to her cat. She left him there to destroy her clothes and went to get some work done.

She entered her summoning room, setting up candles on her table, erasing and redrawing chalk to create a new pentagram. Each demon had unique symbols and while her large collection of spellbooks was dependable, sometimes there were small inconsistencies that required cross-referencing and detailed drawings. The witch, after forty minutes of checking and testing, was finally ready to summon.

She checked her notes and began to cast, cursing her pentagram to hold demons and calling the name of the demon she had prepared for: Ronovo. She added her pre-prepared ingredients to the shallow cauldron in front of her at the correct times. She lit a match and dropped it into a bowl of leaves.

This time, colored smoke began to fill the room. The witch cleared her throat at the tainted air but continued to cast. “Voco te, Ronovo. Veni ad me, Ronovo.”

With a roar, a large man-like creature appeared. With its yellow-green skin marred by black scorch marks on parts of his face and hands covered by a dirty gray robe, it was extremely unappealing. No intelligible words exited his mouth but copious amounts of blue and purple smoke and strange screeching definitely did.

“I call upon you to answer to crimes against my people,” the witch began, speaking loudly over its screeching. “Are you responsible for the disappearance of our animals?”

The creature continued screeching and spewing smoke but the screeches now varied in some sort of speech pattern, with cadence and tone and pitch. It gestured widely with its hands, the witch guessed that he was asking about their location, perhaps.

“We’re on earth, a human village. Have you taken our animals? Do you know who has?” the witch asked again, still speaking over its noise.

It jumped suddenly, startling the witch. She clutched her spellbook to steady her hands and watched as the demon started frantically scratching at the runes on the table. “They’re protected. I’m your only way out and I want some answers before I send you back. Come on, work with me, here.” The demon paused in its scratching and quieted its shreeks to more of a whimper, staring directly at the witch.

She sighed and put her spell book down on top of her stack. “Okay, let’s see.  _ Ruff ruff, arf, awhoooo. _ ” She mimicked dog noises as best as she could. Most demons were fluent in human languages. They had to be, as they had been making deals and stealing souls since humans existed. If the witch had expected a language barrier, she might have prepared images or soundtracks. But she hadn’t so now she was stuck barking in her workroom while a demon slowly filled the room with smoke and screeched at her. Mondays, right?

_ Mrow. _ Hey that's pretty good, but wait  _ that wasn’t me. _ The witch saw her little multicolored fluffball duck under a bookshelf. The demon resumed its shrieking, but to the witch’s surprise, it wasn’t going after Patches. It was cowering and moving as far backwards as it could in the pentagram. It looked absolutely terrified.

The witch went to the bookshelf and made her usual Patches-calling kissy noises. “C’mere Patches!” Patches ran right into her hands like a bullet. “Oh, you’re awfully cuddly today.” The witch began to smile but then sighed. “Oh my god, you’re like a moth. Are my hands nice and warm from spell casting? Is that it? Am I your heat lamp?” Patches didn’t seem to have any answers but he did snuggle into her warm arms and purred.

The witch stood up. “At least you can be useful.” She carried the cat over to the demon and held up Patches. The shrieking doubled in both volume and pitch. Scrunching up her face in discomfort, the witch concluded that this demon was most certainly not the animal thief. One, he was terrified of them. Two, even if he had been the thief she and every other person in the city would have heard him. “Alright! Alright! Shut up!” She dumped Patches at her feet and grabbed the glass of water she had poured earlier. She doused the fire in the bowl, sending Ronovo and his piercing commotion back to hell where they belonged.

The witch grabbed her pen and crossed out another name on her list. She began coughing again and went to get a fan to clear out the air. She supposed progress was progress.

\-----

Progress slowed significantly that afternoon. She tried to summon the fifth demon on Aeshma’s list. She had his runes drawn and the spells were right, she was sure. She double and triple checked them. She lit the fire and called his name, “Malaphar. Mala _ phar _ !” But like usual, nothing happened.

She blew out the air in her cheeks and re-wrapped her loosening bun. “Nothing,” she groaned, “is fucking working.” She slammed the book closed and dropped it on top of the pile of books strewn around her chair. “Patches, come fix it. Make it work.” She slouched down in her chair and let her arms dangle listlessly off the arm rests. Her cat came padding across her hardwood floors at the sound of his name. He leaped up onto the table but found it was not as warm as it usually was. He jumped back down to resume whatever inane cat task he had been doing before. “Noooo,” she sighed. “You were supposed to fix it. If you make it work, it’ll be warm!” But Patches had already left her there to fail at spell casting.

She had lost all concentration and motivation, so she decided to take a break and make herself some dinner. She cleared off her pentagram and erased the runes. They were clearly wrong and it wasn’t safe to leave an unused pentagram lying around. She returned the ingredients she had prepared to their containers and put those back on their shelf. The books she could sort and organize later.

She made her way upstairs and into the kitchen, where she made a sandwich and brewed some evening tea. She scooped half a can of tuna into her cat’s bowl, which was usually enough to summon him from wherever he was hiding. The sound of tuna  _ squelching _ and the fishy smell didn’t exactly appeal to her, but it was cocaine for Patches. The witch sighed and left her dishes in the sink. That would be a later problem, but she didn’t have the energy right now.

“Patches!” she called. She clicked her tongue a few times. “C’mere, kitty... I’ve got tuna for you! Yummy yummy tuna!” She waited for his soft feet to come padding down the hallway or up the stairs.

Maybe something was wrong. Patches could’ve gotten stuck under a bookshelf or one of her cauldrons. She picked up the bowl with a resigned sigh. Maybe that damn cat was rolled up with her new robes. They were soft and relatively undamaged but she supposed they wouldn’t be much longer.

She nearly dropped the bowl at the ungodly yowling coming from her workshop. God, what had Patches gotten himself into this time?

She opened the door to her workshop and distantly heard the bowl clatter to the ground. Something was standing in the middle of the room, growling and dripping strange liquids all over her floor. It had to be some kind of demon, humanoid but with the ears of a donkey, a lion’s mane around its neck, claws like a lion, hooves where its feed should have been. The most horrifying part were its teeth, sharp and bathed in blood.

Patches was stuck beneath the monstrosity, yowling and dodging between its legs. At the noise, he came tearing across the floor to her. But before either of them could react, the demon wrapped its paws around Patches and yanked him backwards.

“NO! YOU PUT HIM DOWN RIGHT THE FUCK NOW!” She launched a freezing spell at the demon. She continued to cast spells, trapping and sealing and blocking, trying not to hurt Patches. “NO ONE! TOUCHES! MY! CAT!”

This demon must have been Malaphar, who she might have successfully summoned earlier without realizing it. And then she had erased the pentagram like an  _ idiot _ and now her poor cat was going to be eaten by this demon and it was her fault.

She scrambled for a jar of bugs and threw them in the air in front of her. “Ad vitam!” she yelled and the dead bugs reanimated and their wings flapped robotically. “Impetoria! Daemon!” The bugs rocketed toward the demon and Patches like small bullets. She had cast with the demon as the target so she hoped Patches wouldn’t be hit. The monster flapped a paw around to block the incoming bugs but he still held Patches in one claw.

“Patches!” the witch yelled again. Patches continued to yowl and claw the demon holding him to no avail.

Time. She needed time. She sprinted toward her potions counter and grabbed a few bottles. A bright pink bubble potion and a gray growing potion. She used the bubbles to entertain kids and the growing potion should increase the size astronomically. She just needed to make the monster immobile, so a thickening potion too. She grabbed the clear bottle with the green label.

Rather than waste time with mixing, the witch chucked the three bottles across the room. Two of them broke upon impact and the third one, the bubble potion, rolled along the floor. “Fulgur!” she shouted and sent an electric pulse flying to break the bottle open. Bubbles floated up and as they touched the demon’s potion-soaked skin they hardened and began growing, enveloping Malaphar and Patches in a bright pink bubble of hold-still.

She needed some serious help. That bubble wouldn’t hold forever. In desperation, the witch turned to her summoning table. She quickly scratched runes across the table, partially from memory and partially copied from quickly-flipped-through spellbooks.

She had never prepared a summoning ritual so quickly. She dropped the match in the bowl of leaves and called. She barely saw the fire before she heard a dangerous  _ pop _ behind her. The roaring from the monster resumed as the bubbles around his body popped one after another.

And then Aeshma rose up behind her, his flames licking the air around his entire body. “What’s going on here?” Twin balls of blue flames were cupped in his clawed hands.

“Careful!” she shouted over Malaphar’s roaring and now Patches’ terrified meowing. “He’s got Patches!”

If it was even possible, the fire around Aeshma rose even higher. “If you even  _ think _ about harming that sacred creature, you will be boiling in hellfire in an instant.” His words were level and spoken in a scary-kind-of-calm. The danger in his tone made the threat that much scarier. Malaphar seemed unaffected, though. As more bubbles popped and he gained more movement, he moved Patches closer and closer to his already-bloodied teeth.

Aeshma turned to the witch. “Release me child.”

The witch only needed to hear a moment more of heart-wrenching meows before swiping a hand through her chalk marks. She had already released one demon today, what was one more?

Aeshma burst forward, laying his fiery hands on Malaphar’s chest. Malaphar yet out a roar of pain and finally, finally dropped Patches. The witch dropped to her knees in relief and Patches came streaking towards her, slamming his face into her stomach. She clutched him to her chest and stood back from the demons.

Aeshma only took another couple minutes to turn Malaphar into a charred mess of a demon. Aeshma didn’t have an easy time of it, though. He had a few deep gouges and would have some ugly bruises from those hooves, if demons even bruised.

“Witch,” Aeshma said, panting hard and grimacing in pain. “I will return him to hell. He will no longer bother your people or your people’s animals.”

The witch nodded her thanks, Patches curled up snug in her arms. “I can send you back.”

Aeshma dragged the limp Malaphar onto the summoning table. It was now quiet, burn marks and blood and spell remnants and broken glass all over the room. Somehow the bowl full of burning leaves seemed so small.

But the witch grabbed the pail of water next to her plants and stepped up to douse it. “Thank you, Aeshma. I have no way to repay you for this.”

“Do not fret, young witch.” Aeshma offered a small smile. “I am honored to save Patches. He is a fearless, proud creature deserving of my protection. I only ask that you call me to visit every so often.”

The witch smiled back. “Of course.” She poured the water over the bowl and both demons disappeared. She turned back to the room, Patches still in her arms. “What a mess.”

Patches jumped from her arms and onto the table. Still jumpy from the demon attack, the witch scrambled to grab him again but stopped herself. As usual, Patches was laying in the middle of her circle, soaking up the magic warmth like it was sunlight on the kitchen floor.


End file.
